Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the Galaxy 37 launch. Still earning overtime pay these nights
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 - Galaxy 37
Written: August 3, 2023
Splitting the launch price
SpaceX will launch the dual purpose Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 mission on a Falcon 9 into a Geostationary Transfer Orbit - GTO - from SLC-40 in Florida just after midnight.
Lift Off took place on Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 01:00 EDT - 05:00 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
The Falcon 9 rocket will be composed of booster B1077-6, its 251st second stage and old reused fairings containing the SSL1300 satellite weighing in at 5063 Kg.
The Falcon 9 didn’t perform a static fire test of the engines. This has been omitted many times due to Falcon 9’s increasing reliability. Only after engine swabs and issues with the importance of the payload does a static fire test become necessary.
B1077-6 will have made its sixth flight after launching its next mission:
After separating from the second stage, the booster B1077-6 will land on the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship - Just Read The Instruction - some 638 Km downrange.
NGA notice on the flight path of Galaxy 37 with ASDS position and fairing recovery area
After refurbishment of the booster, it will be designated as B1077-7. The second stage will after payload deployment be deorbited in the Pacific Ocean ‘Ten’ hours after launch.
The fairings are both reused, flying for the eighth and tenth time with no known previous missions flown together. Bob will recover them 760 Km downrange.
The Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 payload
The big SSL1300 satellite built by Maxar will carry two payloads - Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 - into a Geostationary Orbit and will be parked in the 117o West position from where it can serve North Pacific regions on Earth. Namely Alaska and other US customers.
Maxar delivered the Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 satellite to SpaceX’s launch base in Florida for Intelsat.
Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 will deliver two kinds of capability. It incorporates Ku-band beams on a payload jointly owned by Intelsat and JSAT International. Its C-band payload joins four previously ordered satellites from MAXAR that transition Intelsat’s broadband coverage to free up spectrum for 5G terrestrial wireless services.
The payload part on the SSL1300 satellite called Horizons-4 will replace Horizons-1, that is part of an old satellite (S2475), a Japanese company licensed Ku-band payload on the Galaxy 13/Horizons-1 spacecraft, located at 127.0° West Longitude.
The old Galaxy 13/Horizons-1 spacecraft works in the old bandwidth ranges, which must be cleared with narrower spot beams in the Ku-band and C-band. This will clear up these frequencies for future 5G data network transmissions. It’s expected that the old satellites will be turned off or at least partly off, if there is still some use for their services.
The SSL1300 satellite is based on the GEOStar-3 satellite Bus and is equipped with the IHI BT-4 propulsion module, which is built by the Japanese company IHI Aerospace, the BT-4 is a pressure-fed engine that runs on N2O4 and Hydrazine.
IHI BT-4 produces 500 N of thrust in a vacuum with an ISP of ~320 seconds. This engine is also used on Cygnus and HTV — two resupply vehicles servicing ISS.
Neither Intelsat or Maxar have released data on the satellite, it is expected that the satellite weighs roughly 5000 kg based on previous satellites and Falcon 9’s performance.
The rocket launch
A typical Falcon 9 mission begins with the countdown that has a traditional 35-minute long propellant load sequence which begins with RP-1 (a refined form of kerosene) loading on both stages and liquid oxygen (LOX) loading on the first stage only.
Loading of RP-1 on the second stage wraps up first at the T-20 minute mark followed by the usual “T-20 minute vent” as the oxygen purging begins on the pipelines of the Falcon 9 Transporter/Erector (T/E) that supplies fluids and power to the vehicle. LOX load on the second stage begins about four minutes after that at T-16 minutes.
Engine chill commences at the T-7 minute mark with a small flow of LOX going into the turbopumps on all nine Merlin engines on the first stage. RP-1 loading on the booster then wraps up about a minute later at the T-6 minute mark.
LOX load on the first and second stages ends at around the T-3 minute and T-2 minute mark respectively, and the rocket takes control of the countdown at the T-1 minute mark.
Engine ignition is commanded at T-3 seconds allowing them to achieve maximum thrust and pass final checks before committing to launch and if engine checks look correct, the ground clamps release the rocket for liftoff at the expected T0 time.
After liftoff, Falcon 9 climbs away from the launch site, pitching downrange as it maneuvers along its pre-programmed trajectory. Approximately 72 seconds into the flight, the vehicle passes through Max-Q — the point of maximum dynamic pressure, where mechanical stresses on the rocket are the greatest.
The nine first-stage engines continue to power Falcon 9 for the first two minutes and 30 seconds of the mission, until the time of main engine cutoff (MECO), at which point all nine engines shut down nearly simultaneously.
Stage separation normally occurs 3-4 seconds later, with the ignition of the second stage’s Merlin Vacuum engine coming about seven seconds after staging.
While the second stage continues onward to orbit with its payload, the first stage coasts upward to apogee — the highest point of its trajectory — before beginning its trip back to Earth. The booster refines its course toward the landing zone before attempting to softly touch down on the deck of one of SpaceX’s three drone ships.
Two or three burns are required to secure the safe return and landing of a Falcon 9 booster depending on the chosen landing site. A boost back burn nullifies the horizontal speed from about 7000 km/h plus to a 1000 km/h negative if a return to launch site is chosen.
Normally a free fall trajectory is chosen which requires a re-entry burn designed to break the speed into the denser atmosphere. The Merlin 1D# engines start in a 1-3-1 sequence with the center engine 9 starting 4 seconds before lighting up engine 1 and 5 in a burn lasting 14-16 seconds ending with a 2 second center engine solo burn.
The re-entry burn last 20-22 seconds and the booster is now falling and steering through the denser atmosphere with the 5x6 feet grid fins. A last landing burn performed by the Merlin 1D# center engine is timed to the last millisecond securing the aiming and breaking of the boosters speed. Booster landings have been performed over 210 times.
Using a drone ship for booster recovery allows SpaceX to launch more mass in a payload on Falcon 9 than it would be able to launch on a return-to-launch-site mission.
In the meantime, the second stage carries on with the primary mission. After stage separation and Merlin Vacuum engine ignition, the payload fairing halves are jettisoned, thereby exposing the satellites to space.
Much akin to the Falcon 9 first stage, the fairing halves can be recovered and reused, using a system of thrusters and parachutes to make a controlled descent into the ocean where they will be picked up by a recovery vessel.
Second-stage engine cutoff (SECO-1) takes place just over eight and a half minutes into the flight. Other engine burns to modify or increase the deployment orbit will follow if the mission requires it, such as on this commercial mission which used a second burn before deploying the Galaxy 37 satellite.
The Galaxy 37 satellite are deployed into a geostationary transfer orbit. The satellite will raise itself into a more stable orbit, where it will undergo checkouts before heading into its final operational orbit which was completed August 22, 2023.
The Falcon 9 rocket
The Falcon 9 Block 5 is SpaceX’s partially reusable two-stage medium-lift launch vehicle. The vehicle consists of a reusable first stage, an expendable second stage, and, when in payload configuration, a pair of reusable fairing halves.
The Falcon 9 first stage contains 9 Merlin 1D# sea level engines. Each engine uses an open gas generator cycle and runs on RP-1 and liquid oxygen (LOx). Each engine produces 845 kN of thrust at sea level, with a specific impulse (ISP) of 285 seconds, and 934 kN in a vacuum with an ISP of 313 seconds.
Due to the powerful nature of the engine, and the large amount of them, the Falcon 9 first stage is able to lose an engine right off the pad, or up to two later in flight, and be able to successfully place the payload into orbit.
The Merlin engines are ignited by triethylaluminum and triethylborane (TEA-TEB), which instantaneously burst into flames when mixed in the presence of oxygen. During static fire and launch the TEA-TEB is provided by the ground service equipment. However, as the Falcon 9 first stage is able to propulsively land, three of the Merlin engines (E1, E5, and E9) contain TEA-TEB canisters to relight for the boost back, reentry, and landing burns.
The Falcon 9 second stage is the only expendable part of the Falcon 9. It contains a singular MVacD engine that produces 992 kN of thrust and an ISP of 348 seconds. The Falcon 9 can put some or many payloads in different orbits on missions with many burns and/or long coasts between burns, the second stage is able to be equipped with a mission extension package.
When the second stage has this mission extension package it has a gray strip, which helps keep the RP-1 warm in sunlight, an increased number of composite-overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) for pressurization control, and additional TEA-TEB.
SpaceX is the first entity ever that recovers and reflies its fairings. After being jettisoned, the two fairing halves will use cold gas thrusters to orientate themselves as they descend through the atmosphere. Once at a lower altitude, they will deploy drogue chutes and parafoils to help them glide down to a soft landing for recovery.
The Falcon 9’s fairing consists of two dissimilar reusable halves. The first half (the half that faces away from the transport erector) is called the active half, and houses the pneumatics for the separation system. The other fairing half is called the passive half.
Comparison of Type 1 and 2 with measurements based on pixels - Type 2 are 5-6 inches thicker
As the name implies, this half plays a purely passive role in the fairing separation process, as it relies on the pneumatics from the active half.
SpaceX used boats with giant suspended nets to attempt to catch the fairing halves, however, at the end of 2020 this program was canceled due to safety risks and a low success rate. On this Galaxy 37, SpaceX will attempt to recover the fairing halves from the water with their recovery vessel Bob.
There are three known types of 34 x 17 foot fairings used by SpaceX to protect payload during ascent through the atmosphere. The first type had 10 evenly spaced ventilation ports in a circle on the bottom part of the fairings. This type was not aerodynamic enough to carry a parachute and ACS - Attitude Control System.
The aerodynamic balance during descent must have made them prone to stalling, or they burned up too easily. ACS gas tanks, flight orientation computers and ACS thrusters must have helped with these problems during development of type 2 fairings.
The second type is a slightly thicker fairing with only 8 evenly spaced ventilation ports in a circle on the bottom part of the fairings. The ventilation ports release the pressurized Nitrox gas during ascent, but let seawater in which makes it harder to refurbish the fairings after recovery from the ocean.
In 2021, SpaceX started flying a new “upgraded” version of the Falcon 9 fairing. The third type has 8 ventilation ports in pair’s near the edge of the fairings.
Some old type 2 fairings have been rebuilt and reused in Starlink launches. That have been a test program to develop the type 3 fairings to prevent saltwater from the ocean from flooding and sinking the fairing, and makes refurbishment toward the next flight easier.
Lately it’s apparent that the fairings are actively aiming for the droneship in order to speed up the recovery process and cut corners of the time table. The fairings are breaking their speed during reentry and before deploying the parachute at altitude or the last moment.
Another solution is a ‘vertical’ boost lifting the fairings apogee so the ballistic trajectory is changed aiming for a landing nearer the droneship. It’s equivalent to raising the angle on a water hose giving the water stream an higher arc but giving it a shorter reach.
Every landing within 50 km of the ASDS seems to be an aimed fairing landing.
The Galaxy 37 mission won’t be utilizing this ‘push up’ fairing recovery program.
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